Remember when Silicon Valley was a beautiful progressive community of rich hippies? Not any more.

This was a comment from a redditor from r/gunpolitics. It really got me thinking. I *do* remember when Silicon Valley was a progressive utopia, just like the rest of California. I remember when the rich tech hippies in Silicon Valley wanted to change the world for the better. I want to believe that they still do. I see a timeline where the gun culture and the community of gun owners are a big part of that change. <br><br>I saw an article today from 2012 where Mark Zuckerberg talked about the progress in his lab-grown meat project. He only ate meat from animals he himself had killed. Why do you think he did that? Do you think he thought lab-grown meat was important? Or do you think he thought that the meat you eat should be important to you? Sure, you can grow meat in a lab, but why are you doing it? Are you doing it because you want cheap meat for all, and you want to reduce animal suffering, or are you doing it because you believe that the meat you eat should be important to you, and you should know where it comes from? That perspective is totally lost in the modern progressive utopia.<br><br>There is a lot of talk about the evil gun lobby these days. The way I see it is not that the gun lobby is evil and wants to give everyone more guns. I think the gun lobby is trying to preserve a culture around guns, and they are doing it for the same reasons that Mark Zuckerberg grew his own meat and hunted his own food before he ate it. The act of hunting animals for food was deeply important to him, and the meat he ate was only important if it came from an animal that he had hunted and killed himself. Or, the act of defending yourself and your family using deadly force is deeply important, and the freedom you enjoy is only important if you have earned it and you understand what you have done to earn it. If you are only alive because a police officer or soldier is willing to die to protect you, that is not freedom. That is slavery. What the gun lobby is fighting for is the freedom to preserve a culture around self-defense, hunting, and sport shooting. The freedom to hunt and eat your own food, to defend yourself and your family, and to participate in shooting sports. Mark Zuckerberg was a gun owner, hunter, and "meat-eater" (I think he is a vegetarian now). Silicon Valley was full of progressive tech hippies like Zuckerberg who liked guns and were willing to fight for their right to own them. I think that perspective is totally lost in the corporate-run dystopian surveillance state that is California now. I think we can get it back. I would like to go back to a progressive utopia where tech hippies like Zuckerberg wanted to make the world a better place, and where the gun culture was a part of that.